Why a membership instead of an AI subscription? The €4.99 model, honestly explained
"€4.99 for AI chat, seriously?" is the most common reaction to our price. The short answer: the membership isn't an AI subscription at all. The long answer explains why we deliberately kept them apart.
What the membership actually covers
€4.99 a month pays for using the app past the trial period, for curated characters your account pulls from the hub, for the hub itself and its moderation, and for updates through an authenticated update server. None of that scales with how many messages you write or how many images you generate. It's a running-the-thing-and-community contribution, not a usage allowance.
Why we don't fold AI costs into it
An AI flat rate inside the membership would have meant we buy credit from a provider ourselves and pass it on to you — putting a server between you and the language model. That's exactly what our core rule rules out: no operator server that sees, or even just relays, your chats. There's an economic side too: a flat rate would have light users cross-subsidizing heavy ones, or forced us to add a usage cap and explain why the app suddenly stopped working. Separate bills solve both problems at once.
What you actually pay for AI
Your model costs go straight to OpenRouter or fal.ai, with no markup from us — we don't see a cent of it. With a cheap model, a few euros often last weeks; our cost calculator on the website gives an honest estimate using current prices, not numbers frozen into the code. So you pay for what you actually use, not for an average where heavy users and occasional chatters pay the same.
And without a membership?
After the trial (one free day plus a 14-day Stripe trial), the app switches without an active membership into a read-and-export mode — your characters and chats stay visible and exportable, no loss of access to your own data. Canceling happens right in your account, with a dedicated button as German law (§312k BGB) requires — no phone call, no form that vanishes into nowhere.
A bundled AI flat rate would have subsidized heavy users at occasional chatters' expense. Kept separate, everyone pays for what they actually use.